Maybe you sell Kegerators and your targeted audience is high-end luxury homebuilders (and / or buyers) that want a unique bar in their home.

(The point is, it doesn’t matter what you sell, every business has KPI’s)

Most businesses will have multiple verticals of prospects, no matter if they sell one specific product/service or hundreds. If you don’t narrow it down and get specific, you’ll feel like you’re lost at sea without a compass.

Step 2: Build Up Your Value, In Their Eyes

Once you’ve identified and picked a targeted vertical (or two or three) to go after, use a combination of email, LinkedIn, webinars, twitter, etc. to brand yourself (or your company) as an SME (Subject Matter Expert) in your field by offering free advice / help in areas that will matter to your targeted audience.

So for example, if you sell in-home kegs, you could have email newsletters / articles that discuss what the perfect beer temperature is for taste, how to clean your tap with ease, or a special recipe of the month. You could also do an occasional webinar on how to brew your own beer or how to make three unique drinks that will knock your guests socks off!

With today’s automated and semi-automated low-cost drip marketing platforms, you can routinely “touch” prospects with valuable information, simultaneously, without picking up the phone.

Offering those kinds of useful solutions while having a strong, but subtle call to action at the end of the webinar or newsletter, will start to drive so many INBOUND requests, you won’t have time to sit and ponder about how much you hate cold calling.

But for that to happen, you need to separate yourself from the rest of the competition. And in order to do that, you need to be willing to do what no one else is willing to do to earn your prospect’s trust and business. Working with your marketing team (or if you are a one-man band) to have a simple drip marketing process in place, combined with knowing EXACTLY what to say in order to pique your prospect’s interest on the phone, will give you a competitive edge that will have you winning more business.

Speaking of knowing EXACTLY what to say on the phone…

Step 3: Know How to Pique Interest in the First 30 Seconds of a Sales Call

Calling your prospect and saying the traditional:

“Hi, this is (your name) with (your company) and we offer blah, blah, blah and wanted to see if I could get a few minutes on your calendar to show you blah, blah, blah” isn’t building up value, it’s creating a wall between you and your prospects.

When you take the time to build a vertical list of prospects to go after based off of past clients that are happy with your services, you can easily make successful cold calls to NEW prospects by simply saying:

“Hi, this is (your name) with (your company). Reason form my call is we recently helped (competitor 1, 2 and 3) avoid (pain point) while reducing (or gaining) ______ by _____% and wanted to see if we might be able to do the same for you.”

Now here’s the best part… even if on that sales call attempt, you’ve identified that right now, there is no need… If you continue to follow the advice given in step 2 above, when a need does arise, you will be the first person they call.

– Michael Pedone

Michael Pedone teaches inside sales teams how to pick up the phone and close business. He is the CEO/FOUNDER of SalesBuzz.com – An online sales training company.

INSIDE SALES WORKSHOPS

How to successfully sell by phone – Live Online Sessions from Michael Pedone